


to build a home

by moonatoms



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: F/M, Found Families, but it's not sad, kind of more of an introspection piece i guess, maybe one day i can safely stop using that as a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-16 18:50:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16500812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonatoms/pseuds/moonatoms
Summary: Before Lucifer and Maze, before she reconciled with Dan, before she met Ella, before, dinner had been a quiet affair. Well, as quiet as it could be with a child (and Trixie was an active one, too, always running around and talking a mile a minute) but nothing compared to the way it was now.





	to build a home

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing
> 
> many thanks to wollfgang for reading over this for me and giving me helpful suggestions!
> 
> I know I used to have another fic with this title before but I took it down and it's probably never going back up so I stole the title from myself because it really fits here, guys.

Before Lucifer and Maze, before she reconciled with Dan, before she met Ella, _before_ , dinner had been a quiet affair. Well, as quiet as it could be with a child (and Trixie was an active one, too, always running around and talking a mile a minute) but nothing compared to the way it was now.

 

There was Dan, cold and silent Dan who would, while they were married, spend his nights chasing down leads and hanging out at bars with the less trustworthy crowd of the LAPD instead of with their daughter and her. Now he was sitting across from her at the table, taking a big swig of beer while he laughed at something Ella said.

 

The forensic scientist was talking animatedly, her dark ponytail bouncing up and down as the words bubbled out of her like an unconstrained waterfall, hands waving in excitement as she told a story about a car chase in Chicago and a new piece of equipment she just absolutely _needed_ for the lab.

 

There was Linda, sitting next to her, a wide smile on her face as she glanced around the table. Her eyes lingered on Chloe for a second and she raised her eyebrows ever so slightly before her gaze settled on Maze (and, like everyone else in the room, Chloe tactfully pretended not to notice the way something in it shifted and became deeper, full of a silent longing that she herself knew too well).

 

The demon was sat at the head of the table together with Trixie, and they both had their brows furrowed in concentration as they whispered quietly to each other, no doubt coming up with all sorts of shenanigans. Maze whispered something about _fire_ and _explosion_ andTrixie giggled loudly at that, as happy and carefree as she should be.

 

Chloe knew she should probably be worried, there had been other incidents, a science project gone awry, a surprise dinner and then fire trucks parked outside. But she couldn’t, not right now, when her daughter was beaming under the attention of her friend and - there was no better way to describe it - co-mother in all but name. So she let her daughter’s giggles infect her instead, let her lips stretch so wide the corners of her mouth started hurting and let the feeling wash through her.

 

And then there was Lucifer. He was sitting on her right side, a small smile on his lips that was almost wistful as his eyes met hers and for a second she was struck by the realization that in some ways, they were not all that different.

 

Lucifer had been cast out of heaven by his father. He’d been sent to hell and punished and vilified.

 

He’d been alone in the dark for millennia.

 

Her childhood had been warm. It had been hugs that made you feel safe and her father teaching her how to ride a bike. Loud and frenetic giggles when he pushed her on the swing. Falling asleep to the calm rumble of his voice when he told her a story. Weekends spent making pancakes and chasing the ocean tide.

 

Lucifer had never had a father that believed in him, someone who showed him the sky and would not even let that be the limit. But Chloe had, for a glorious 19 years. Where her mother was rough at the edges her father was gentle and soft and felt like _home_.

 

Chloe’s childhood had been warm, but it had not all been easy.

 

She’d always been different. Too earnest, her smile too tight-lipped. She was fierce because her Dad taught her how to be, but it wasn’t something that was rewarded in girls. She was warm and soft where she dared to be, rescuing baby birds and feeding the stray kittens in the alley on her way to school that she couldn’t take home because her mother was allergic to cats, but she also had the rough edges of her mother and the sharp mind of her grandfather. She was intelligent, the kind of quiet, determined intelligence that showed in her gaze and unsettled peers and boys all the same, and she stood firm where others cowered.

 

For a while, in those years where her skin broke out and everything suddenly became complicated, she tried to fit in. She fought with her mother about make-up and the way she ought to dress and then she went to school and put it on herself in the dirty, cramped toilets, exchanged the washed-out sweater she had haphazardly thrown on in the morning for something more low-cut and fitting that made her eyes pop. Her mother would have been proud but she didn’t want to do it because of her mother, she wanted to do it in spite of her. She laughed at all the right jokes, too and didn’t make comments that could be perceived as _nerdy_ and _uncool_ all the while resisting the urge to roll her eyes at the shallowness of it all.

 

This had never been her, instead it had been a rebellion against herself, much like taking her top off at 19 for a movie had been. A rebellion against the girl whose nose was always stuck in books, who didn’t have a poster of the Backstreet Boys stuck to her wall and who preferred a camping trip with her father to sneaking into a glitzy LA nightclub with the girls in her class.

 

And it had failed miserably.

 

In the end she had to concede that she had never really belonged anywhere but at home. And then after her father died, she hadn’t even belonged there anymore.

 

So she understood it, in a way, the curvature of Lucifer’s smile, the look in his eyes which was in part reservation and in part a gentle happiness at this; a dinner with a group of people that were the closest thing he’d ever had to a real family.

 

She understood even if the only way in which she could say it was to reach out her hand to cover his with it briefly, the shortest of touches.

 

His smile curved further, his eyes shone brightly, dark orbs reflecting the light.

 

Chloe Decker glanced around the table and felt a rumble of something in her stomach, warm and soft in the glow of the candles, and she let it fill her with warmth and settle her in a way she hadn’t felt settled since she was a child.

 

* * *

 

The way the story was perhaps supposed to go is like this:

 

When Chloe Decker found out Lucifer was the Devil, she ran away. The Devil was dark and he was evil and it’s what people do.

 

It’s what they have always done.

 

But this is not what actually happened.

 

Instead, when Chloe Decker found out Lucifer Morningstar was the Devil, she ran towards him and gently reached out her hand to touch his face, red and burned.

 

She ran towards him, maybe because she knew him, and the color of his face did not change what lay beneath. Or maybe it was because she looked into his eyes and saw herself, alone and scared, at 5 on a playground while the older kids jeered and at 19 just after her father had died standing by his grave, wanting to disappear. Maybe it was because she recognized this look, because she’d seen it so many times before before, in herself and others, in Dan and her mother and Ella, too. In witnesses and victims and perps, too, and in the skittish neighbour’s dog when she first tried to pet it. All of them stripped of the skin covering them.

 

He wasn’t covering himself then either, instead he was laid completely bare in front of her. And maybe that’s what ultimately made her step towards him and stretch out her hand and touch the scorched skin that felt too hot under her own. Maybe that’s what made her heart break in her chest and wrap her arms around him and pull him close until their bodies were completely aligned and she could feel his own heart beat in sync with her own.

 

* * *

 

When Chloe Decker was a child her dad and her would rescue all sorts of creatures. Birds, cats, even a racoon once. It’s what she remembered most about him in those moments when she lay awake at night and could see his face in front of her eyes. The magnitude of his heart, the way he cared about all beings alike. Chloe Decker was rough around the edges, hardened by experience, cautious because of the ways in which she had been burned, and maybe that gentle wariness had always been a part of her too, but so was the softness that lay deeper.

 

She’d built walls around it, had tried to bury it deep, had not wanted to get burned again but it beat softly against her ribs like the rhythm of her heart and the bricks of the wall cracked under the weight of the people trying to get in.

 

It was the little things. Ellas enthusiastic hugs on those grey days. Maze’s feigned - and actual - annoyance when they tried to teach her how to ride a bike. Trixie’s weight against her when she read her a bedtime story, trying to let her voice rumble through her daughter’s small frame like her dad’s had done for her. Dan’s wide smile when their daughter giggled loudly as he pushed her on the swing. Lucifer’s laughter when they made pancakes on lazy Saturday mornings, stealing kisses as the breeze flitted in through the open windows. Linda’s gentle whispers when she put down the bowl of cat food in the alley behind her office, the way her lips curved when the cats rubbed softly against her legs.

 

It was the little things that made the bricks crack and break and her heart expand.

 

Before, before all of this, it had been just Trixie and her, sitting at the table just the two of them, eating Spaghetti with canned sauce while her daughter chatted on about her day.

 

Of course that had been enough, too. Trixie had always been enough for her.

 

But she didn’t miss the quietness, didn’t miss the way in which her spine had been straighter and her gaze more angled. The way in which she went through the world, always waiting for the other shoe to drop because she knew it would eventually.

 

How lonely it had all felt.   

 

This warmth was something new and it was something old. It was the feeling of finally, after so many years, belonging somewhere again. There was still darkness in the world and she still carried its weight, but it was lighter and it was warmer and for the first time in many years, she felt like she was really _home_.

  


**Author's Note:**

> Title from "To Build a Home" by The Cinematic Orchestra. Listen.


End file.
